Free web-based foreign language courses available to soldiers.

The Army signed a $4.2 million contract with Fairfield Language Technologies to offer computer-based Rosetta Stone language courses free of charge to Army Knowledge Online users.

"We looked at those areas and put together a program to improve language proficiency across the force. It was based on an operational need," said Brig. Gen. James M. Milano, the Army's director of training under G3.

Rosetta Stone offers full-immersion reading, writing, speaking and listening instruction in 26 languages, including strategic ones such as Arabic, Mandarin and Korean, said Milano.

The Air Force and other entities within the Defense Department have had positive experiences with Rosetta Stone, said Milano. The program integrated quickly with Army e-Learning, a program accessed through AKO that offers more than 2,200 commercial web-based courses ranging from information technology and business to leadership and personal development.

"Army e-Learning is our established methodology to provide software to the force," said Milano. "It provides a trusted interface, utilizes AKO to validate users. And it provides embedded training management capabilities, so the instructor can check on training."

This year, 196,000 users have completed courses through the program, according to Stan Davis, project officer for Army e-Learning. The program has licensed Rosetta Stone for 1.4 million people, he said.

The Rosetta Stone courses were scheduled to become available on Nov. 7 via Army e-Learning.

"Units preparing to deploy are anxious to use this tool as pre-deployment training," said Milano. It will give commanders the ability to polish a diamond that's getting ready to deploy by helping war-fighters establish basic proficiency in a language, he said.

"Once you know where you're going, for example, to Iraq, then the commander should have you go out, log onto AKO, and learn Farsi," said Col. Sharon Holmes, program manager of the Army's distributed learning system, which is responsible for building and deploying training systems such as Army e-Learning.

After units have deployed, Milano said, soldiers could use Rosetta Stone as a sustainment tool.

"We have online capabilities in theater--in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kuwait," he said. When soldiers encounter situations in which they need to communicate with native speakers, they can easily access Rosetta Stone to brush up on their language skills, he said

Such online capabilities enable the Army to present effective, quality training at significant lower costs, said Milano.

The $4.2 million investment is not very large when compared to the capability that Rosetta Stone will offer, said Milano. When you consider the costs of having to send soldiers around the country for foreign language training--the costs of instructors the facilities, housing, travel, temporary duty--all of that adds up quickly, he said. And some languages take a long time to learn. The potential for cost savings in having soldiers train at home through computers is incalculable, he said.

The net result will be a force that is ready and relevant to meet the nation's requirements, he said.

In addition, Rosetta Stone could potentially boost recruiting for the Army.

"I see the types of soldiers that the Army will recruit in the future as becoming even more technology-savvy than those we're bringing into the force today," he said.

"They're comfortable doing this type of training" and Rosetta Stone ought to be an attractive feature in recruiting efforts, he said.

Down the road, Milano sees much potential for many other subjects and training courses to be implemented via AKO and Army e-Learning. For example, the Army could offer training in ethics, subversion and espionage, and prevention of sexual harassment as well as additional predeployment training, such as rules of engagement specific to the area of responsibility to which a soldier is deploying, he said. The list potentially could include prerequisite training for professional military education.

"This is a tremendous capability that is representative of where the Army can go in a lot of educational areas. It is very cost effective, and it shows good stewardship of limited resources. Most importantly, we think soldiers are going to like this. They're going to want to take advantage of this," said Milano.